He says the guide is difficult to follow, that it's not bad but the forum doesn't lend itself well with image posts. That's all. I somewhat agree. It's not presented in a manner which gets to the point readily, and a lot of the information that is presented is presented in a manner which makes it less than obvious what works better.

Do you even understand frost? There is no "better" - there are options with pros and cons both functionally and preferentially. Even with my new crit math there is no clear answer, the most I can give everyone data that details what each combination or strategy of gearing means to various spells.

How is that defensive? He complains about the guide and says it's impossible to follow-- but doesn't ask for any clarification.

So does he understand it? Does he have any questions? I don't get the purpose of his post.

How is it not defensive?
"Uh thanks for the feedback?"
"I don't get paid for this, its voluntary"
No way, does that mean no one can give you constructive criticism because you aren't paid for it?
It's not even like he/she was rude or anything, just said that they think the guide is awesome, but in their opinion it might benefit from some cleaning up.
"Perhaps you're just not a visual learner, I suggest you listen to Flight Attendants rather than looking at the Safety Card when you fly."
Did you seriously just try to insinuate that the poster is stupid because they thought your "invaluable guide to frost mages" could be improved?
"He complains about the guide and says it's impossible to follow-- but doesn't ask for any clarification."
Well, he said its nearly impossible to follow indicating he/she had a bit of difficultly following it at some point but he/she managed (people exaggerate, shocking I know).
"So does he understand it?"
I say so, given the qualifier "nearly", as in "almost did not".
"Does he have any questions?"
Did he ask you any? Seems he/she didn't than.
"I don't get the purpose of his post."
If you don't understand the purpose of his post perhaps its you who should listen to the Flight Attendants rather than looking at the safety card?

Hey I'm not a visual learner at all, I preferred the first version of my guide. The guy can have his opinion, but that doesn't mean I have to accept it-- I'm here to help to the best of my ability, it does nobody any good to notify me they don't like how I help people if they won't tell me why, or what I could clarify better, or how I could be more helpful.

I tried some kind of calculation based on my real logs.
Part of logs that I took was:

- number of times it did damage combined (hit and crit damage) for each spell
- for each spell I took average hit and average crit damage

I looked logs from:

- Protectors HC as example of heavy multitarget fight with lot of bomb cleaving (NT)
- Iron Juggernaut as full single target fight
- Shamans as cleave fight with some multitarget

Tried with 2 combinations of gear setup:

- classic 14242 haste and than Mastery
- 14242 haste and all crit after

First setup give 22,92% crit after crit suppresion and 70,41% mastery. On this build actual fights were done
Second setup give 36,13% crit after crit suppresion and 43,53% mastery.

Than did simple calculation where in 1st case 22,92% of each ability was crit and multiplied with average crit damage that spell did in logs.
Rest was hits and multiplied with average hit that spell did in logs. Based on 70,41% mastery Icicles were calculated.
Water elemental damage was also "normalized" to be able to calculate different damage of elemental based on Mastery.
What is visible that actually in logs number of crits for each ability was HIGHER than 22,92% which is probably due to trinket procs which make crit chance higher than those 22.92% and also as RNG is RNG but I ignored it /as it would be same for 36,13% crit) just to get pure mathematical calculation.

In second case it was done same but just with 36,13% of abilities crit and Icicles calculated on 43,53% mastery.

In both cases only ability ignored was Multistrike as it can proc from anything and would be hard to calculate.
In both cases haste was 14242 to have same number of abilities casted.
So, calculation was based on actual logs (number of abilities and average hit and crit damage) with just "normalized" crit percentage and different values of mastery.

Results showed:

- on Protectors crit based setup would do 2% more damage
- on Iron Juggernaut mastery setup would do 2,5% more damage
- on Shamans crit based setup would do 2,5% more damage
- on each fight Icicle damage was HIGHER with Mastery build

If calculation was correct it show that regardless of higher number of Frostbolt that crit Icicle damage from those crits still will in total generate quite significantly lower Icicles overall than on classis build that go for mastery after haste. But where difference come from is from much higher overall damage coming from "non-shatter capped" abilities mostly Frostbolt and bomb as in crit build they overall do much more damage.
As on logs I did fight (and on that average crit value was taken) with 548 PBoI as HC PBoI dodge me constantly (this week I coined cloak) so it seem it can work even with lower PBoI setup.

Definitely something worth trying and as soon as RNG Gods decide to be nice to me and give me HC/HCWF version of PBoI I will definitely go for haste > crit build to see how it work. At least it is something different and worth trying

P.S.
Maybe I did something wrong in all this calculations and got to wrong conclusions but at least I tried
IL and FFB were calculated with 100% crit damage on crit build and 95,84% of crits in mastery build.

There was an interesting point my BM hunter friend brought up about Multistrike trinkets and pets and I was wondering if it was actually relevant to mages:

Assuming you run an extremely high mastery build (Arcane Mage going Frost with 22k+ Mastery), does the value of a KTT devalue enough to the point where a WF BBoY > H KTT, due to your mastery amping your Water Elemental's damage to a point where the Multistrike damage gets lowered a lot and thus loses its value to a BBoY?

There was an interesting point my BM hunter friend brought up about Multistrike trinkets and pets and I was wondering if it was actually relevant to mages:

Assuming you run an extremely high mastery build (Arcane Mage going Frost with 22k+ Mastery), does the value of a KTT devalue enough to the point where a WF BBoY > H KTT, due to your mastery amping your Water Elemental's damage to a point where the Multistrike damage gets lowered a lot and thus loses its value to a BBoY?

I can help you collect data for your ideas on different Frost stat weights. I've got a ton of heroic gear for all three specs (so heavy in all the stat weights). Which order would you like me to do this week? I'll log all the fights I'm in on using WCL and post them wherever you want them to be collected.

If you'd like I can also parse through them fairly quickly for specific information that would help your analysis and throw you a link for an excel DL with the data.

Also: You might consider including a graph / chart that displays the deltas of the different things you are comparing. I think it could make some of the points you are trying to convey a bit clearer and easier to grasp when looking at that type of data display, rather than the raw DPET for each skill / build. Just a suggestion. If you want to highly specific comparisons, it's also easier to do it in this type of display format.

If there are playstyle changes you'd like me to make in order to capitalize on the changes in how damage is being done, let me know a bit ahead of time (preferably by this evening) and I'll run through some Flex raids and practice it.